The Oneders - A Love Letter to That Thing You Do!

What is the difference between your favorite, and the best?

Well it’s a tricky question, because the definition of the best changes for every person, for some, a favorite is the best. For others the best is the one they find to be the best made, even if it has no enjoyment value for them. I feel more towards the second definition, as evidenced by my love for this movie and my more recent love for Palm Springs, despite not exactly calling them the best.

Now here I will not be talking about what I believe to be the best movie ever made, in fact I won’t even disclose my thoughts on it. I’ll be talking about my favorite movie, the movie that’s the single most enjoyable movie I have ever seen, the movie I find equal to an injection of pure joy straight into my bloodstream. A movie so wholesome, it was written and directed by TOM frickin HANKS. A movie which (according to Damien Chazelle) Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling have completely memorized. That’s right, I’m talking about 1996’s That Thing You Do!

Now I will be spoiling this movie, because honestly I really want to geek out over it, so go watch it and then read this.

So anyways, I’ll just start with the obvious, the most fondly remembered aspect...

THE CAST: I love everybody in this movie. Tom Hanks is completely owning the somewhat menacing vibe for a majority of the movie as the band’s producer Mr. White, making the audience think maybe he doesn’t care about the band, and it makes the character so much more engaging. Jonathan Schaech plays the band’s frontman Jimmy, and for the first half he completely embodies the tortured artist trope, with some flashes of his controlling and manipulative nature that comes to ahead towards the second half. Liv Tyler plays a relatively simple love interest character trope which strangely works super well, even if it’s solely because of her interactions with the members of the band. TB Player happens to have some of the most enjoyable moments, and so much of it is because of Ethan Embry’s small but energetic performance.

If you noticed, I didn’t discuss Guy or Lenny there, that’s mostly because I think Guy is too important and interesting to be summed up in a sentence or two, and I want to talk about Lenny later. Tom Everett Scott plays Guy Patterson, a young adult who works at his dad’s electronics store, and once everyone leaves and he has to close up, he turns on some music and goes to the basement and drums along to it. He meets a band made up of people he kind of knew when he was younger, and they ask him to go see them play in a show, he laughs at their offer but he has a longing look to him, and he very clearly wishes to have his own band to play with. The whole movie would not work without these scenes. They set up Guy’s wants without directly telling the audience through dialogue. Once he is brought in as a replacement, he starts to have a music nerd in a dream vibe, and with that, the movie places the audience in Guy’s shoes. He becomes a very clear self-insert for the audience. Even if it’s clear from the beginning, (I mean his name is Guy) the audience someHe’s the self-insert character, but he’s also the focal point. The most interesting part of Guy is how he handles fame. He’s the only member who takes it well, because fame makes your strongest traits into your defining ones. Jimmy becomes more visibly neglectful, Lenny becomes unpredictable and more irresponsible, TB becomes more childlike, Guy simply becomes more caring and kind. That’s why Mr. White saying this to him is such a hard hitting moment. (I love the “A Common Tale” scene).

Now, I’ve just talked about acting so far, and that’s because the acting is probably the best part of the movie. Because while The direction is really good, it’s not really exceptional, the cinematography is decent but nothing special, and the story is pretty formulaic, a group of young people form a band called the Oneders (actually the Wonders). They release a hit song, it gets very famous, and they break up because their personalities don’t mix when their main characteristics are brought to the foreground. It mostly follows Guy Patterson as he lives out his dream and watches it crumble before his eyes. but the writing and the acting elevate it far beyond all of that, and the writing is simply fantastic. I mentioned the formulaic story? It’s designed that way, going back to the common tale clip, just prior to what he tells Guy about the members of the band, Mr. White says this (Back to “A Common Tale”). The writing addresses that this is a story all too common, and the characters actively push back against it. Guy tells him what I find to be the most interesting line in the whole movie.

“I was in a band with a hit song.”

He refuses to admit that it was a common tale for him because he hasn’t been desensitized to it. It addresses issues with the music industry and how we just get used to watching people fail.

Anyways getting out of this dramatic and sad stuff, I’m finally going to talk about my favorite character in the movie, Lenny Haise, played by Steve Zahn. He has the most entertaining role in pretty much any movie I’ve ever seen. Hell, there’s probably a montage of the best Lenny lines somewhere. In that Common Tale scene, Mr. White calls him a fool because he is a fool. When you watch the movie, there is no doubt that Lenny is a fool. But him being foolish is great because it ties together the two best parts of the movie, the acting and the writing. If any other actor were to say these lines, they would feel like someone just saying silly one-liners. But Steve Zahn makes it like someone who really wants to be funny, but the jokes just don’t land with anyone in the movie. It is perfect. Lenny is the best because his jokes aren’t just carelessly thrown around regardless of the situation, Lenny is the best because his lines directly tie into the situation. He’s funny because his jokes are stupid but he thinks he’s a high quality comedian.

So I kind of lied earlier. And those of you who have seen the movie would most likely know that I was lying, but I really wanted to save the most obvious praise for last. That praise would have to be the titular song by the Late, the Great Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne. Just after he passed away back in April, my family watched this movie again and it made me appreciate just how much the guy impacted me. This movie has been in my head for 4 years because of the song. I thought about the lessons in this movie so much because the song has stuck in my head. It’s such a catchy and earworm-esque song that when you look past the lyrics, you find that it’s actually a pretty fun song that works way better at Guy’s faster tempo than Jimmy’s slower one. I bet even Terrence Fletcher would appreciate the tempo change.

This movie means so much to me, I’m serious. I have a Captain Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters sticker on my laptop. I have a Wonders shirt, and I own both the theatrical and director’s cut on blu-ray. but funnily enough, I’m not even sure if I’d remember having seen it those years ago if the song hadn’t gotten stuck in my head.

So thank you Tom Hanks for making something that’s so personal to me and dear to my heart.

And Rest In Peace Adam Schlesinger, I’ll thank you every time I hear you do That Thing You Do.